Japan’s 105-Hour Workweek

Ha, ha. What a dystopian country. Except, wait, this is the very country I've been living for decades.

Where to start with? First, the language. The translation of the common phrase, "Otsukare sama desu" isn't "you look tired" (this is already a misleading and insidious tactic to set the whole tone). The phrase is roughly synonymous to "Gokurou sama desu" but with more sympathy. The literal translation would be "it's hardwork-sama (Mr/Ms. hardwork)", and there's a reason that we use honorifics, which is to admire one's effort.

I can't have a word for the gross exaggeration of the work hours in the article, but I'm certain that one of the big reasons for some people to overwork is not loyalty, but fear. It's often said in Japan "incompetent men tend to overwork" and I find it generally true. In this society of lifetime employment, getting fired or demoted at work has very serious consequences. So they often use their long work hours as an excuse or emotional appeal, which can (sadly) still work. But from what I've seen many managements actually hate the employee's over hours because it's costly and inefficient. It's just that it takes a time to change the people's mindset, but I think the situations are slowly getting improved.

It is probably true that we have more perfectionist/anal-retentive kind of people, but again they're generally the result of fear rather than enthusiasm or moral, because their anal-retentiveness doesn't necessarily result in quality work. A lot of lengthy and pointless paperwork, excess bureaucracy, etc, etc. I pity those people, and hope we have more social mobility to dissolve their anxiety.

I come from a country with the opposite work culture, Norway. We got short days. So does much of northern Europe including Germany. What I don't like about this work hour obsession is the idea that it indicates how hard people work. You can't tell that by hours worked each day. The Greeks work the longest hours in Europe but anybody who has been to Germany and Greece would probably tell you that the Germans probably work harder.

I have a family member who worked in Thailand, which like much of asia has long work hours. But he was far less stressed there than in Norway with his short work hours. In Norway there was no time for anything but work while at work. In Thailand he had lots of time at work to take care of non-work related tasks.

Especially if you got kids in Norway, you end up getting quite stressed even if you work short hours because you don't have the opportunity to dump the whole responsibility of children onto the wife like in Japan. You have to hurry back from work to pick up kids from pre-school/school, help with school work, make dinner, get them ready for bed etc.

Comparing to American work culture which I know best having worked with a lot of Americans I think in Norway we tend to mainly work while at work and socialize after work. While in the US there is a lot more of non-work related activity at work because people spend a lot more time at work. Nothing right or wrong with that. Earlier I worked a lot American style. Spending long hours at work but also socializing more with colleagues.

My point is that I don't think people necessarily should be worshiped for how many hours they spend at work. It is what you do that matters.

Simply false. It contradicts statistical fact and scientific fact.

1) Average annual hours worked: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#Average_annual_ho...

2) The vast majority of humans cannot survive with average sleep length of 4-5h per night on a consistent basis: We will literally, physically die. In reality, the Japanese sleep between 7 and 8 hours on average: http://www.nhk.or.jp/bunken/english/reports/summary/201104/0...

In NYC I worked at a firm where they had to lock the doors and do a security sweep at midnight to prevent people from sleeping under the desks so they could work more. This was a during a training class--not even real work! This wasn't even an investment bank or law firm--the two places in NYC most noted for such extreme "work ethic."

In Singapore there is a well-known phenomenon where employees will not leave the office until (just) after the boss leaves. It doesn't matter if there is nothing left to do--you must never be seen leaving first. For a year I arrived to work 1-2 hours earlier than everyone else, and you know what appeared on my year-end review? "Leaves the office too early."

> In 2007, Mitsubishi UFJ Trust & Banking initiated a program to allow employees to go home up to three hours early to care for children or elderly relatives. After two years, only 34 of the company’s 7,000 employees had signed up for the program.

After two years, only 34 people were willing to be officially identified as people who go home early.

I still find it really, REALLY bizarre and totalitarian that there are corporations that sing The Company Song at morning meetings.

That kind of thing just disturbs the ever-living shit out of me, and seems beyond abnormal.

Does that kind of thing still happen? It feels like a certain, painful breed of brainwashing, or B.F. Skinner-style operant conditioning, is needed to command behavior like that.

This is solely based on my personal experience working in Japan. Reasons why people at my work place work over time:

1. For more pay. We don't get paid a lot (roughly 1,000 yen an hour for full time contracted lifetime employee), so overtime (2,000 per hour) helps. 2. Peer pressure. People generally look down on others who leave early. They will mockingly say things like, "wow I'm so envious that you don't have any work." Unless you have some "legitimate" reason (children, illness).

I lived one year or so in Japan and could not stand it, after living in Korea for some time and China for 5 years or so. I am European.

When talking with European friends about Japan, they joke about the religion of Japan not being Shinto, but Shigoto(work).

Being alien in the country, with knowledge they did not have, gave me freedom that locals could not dream but I suffered a lot for them. Working to a certain point and your productivity becomes negative in an objective way.

But you can't change it because you have to fight against society. The worst thing is that in lots of ways the US is increasingly going down the same path.

It used to be that this was common in Soviet Russia, the output of your work did not matter as much as your input. A tank was "two times better" if it required double quantity of materials, or double assembly hours. So "acting like they were doing a good job" was more important that doing a good job.

It looks like the natural consequence of central planning.

This article about the Japanese workplace culture through the lens of an anglo-saxon person working there somehow echoes my experience as a Frenchman living and working in North America.

Long hours, not necessarily done efficiently, a culture of pride in the long hours you're putting in and a total disregard for the fact that the human brain needs rest to go full speed without burning out.

Balancing personal life, rest, family and physical activity just becomes unfeasible past 40 hours a week, ain't it?

As someone who lives in Japan, I thought I'd give some background information about the pictures included in the article. They're (edit: the pictures AND the captions) clearly chosen to give credence to the "Japanese salaryman"[1] who's always busy and "works to death."[2]

I'll go over the pictures in order displayed in the article, using their captions as a guide.

> Salarymen resting midmeal.

A common theme in the selected pictures is that the people in them are relaxing and I think the implication is supposed to be that they're working 105-hour weeks and they're trying to grab rest where they can.

This is not an unusual sight in Japan or America. You go out to eat with coworkers you like, then you sit back and chat. The Japanese image of someone who's really busy is someone who eats a lunch box or rice ball at his desk while working.

Edit: They're sitting on the floor because they're in a Japanese-style restaurant, so it's easier to lean back on your elbows because there's no chair.

> Staring into nothingness in Hakodate.

This guy isn't staring off into nothingness because he's depressed or so tired he can't think; he's smoking. People tend to stare off into the distance if they're smoking alone and not using their phones or something.

> Standing salarymen eating.

Crowded cities mean strangely-shaped shops with little room for seating. Sushi and noodle bars lend themselves especially well to this kind of standing restaurant since both can be prepared quickly and eaten while standing. All kinds of people eat at these places, not just salarymen. One of the best udon restaurants in my neighborhood is like this.

> Passed out on the train

Looks like a special express, almost definitely not a bullet train given the decor. If you're riding one of those, you're probably traveling for at least an hour. You don't have to be working 105-hour weeks to want to take a nap on a trip where you have nothing to do for an hour.

[1] The idea that there's a generic "Japanese salaryman" is ridiculous. The word itself just means someone who works in an office. Imagine if you gave a single label to every full-time employee in an office in America -- that's how it comes across when Western media uses it.

[2] Another popular "exotic, overworked Japan" meme that comes up is the fact that there's a compound word (過労死, karoushi) for "death by overwork." This is no more exciting than the fact that you can say "death by overwork" in English.

I like the author's writing style. However, it's misleading to make such sweeping generalizations about Japan. I lived in Kyoto for six years. My children went to the local school, and I knew many of the fathers. Nobody I knew was in the situation described here.

The subway at 5-6pm was crowded with salarymen returning from their jobs.

The life of a salaryman lawyer in downtown Tokyo does not extend to the entire country. The author himself, to his credit, might not fully realize this yet.

I also concur with the comments I've read here from other residents of Japan.

I know this is supposedly just lawyers and other specialists, although it sounds like it's not much better for other "salarymen." I'm having trouble corroborating the actual numbers, though. And if so many men are getting so little sleep, how is life expectancy still so high in Japan? Any other sources for this?

How can you be working just as efficiently as Western counterparts when you're napping? I don't know about being a lawyer, but in my own experience it is impossible for me to program effectively after about 10 hours. Wouldn't surprise me if there are rare exceptions, but generally the human body just does not handle that well.

This guardian article makes the consequences of this overwork clear: Japan's birth rate is lower than its death rate. ( http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/20/young-people-ja... )

There are early Apple/Jobs stories about working "90 hours a week and loving it". I know people that put in 80 hours a week here in the U.S. The most I have ever put in was 65-70 hours for a job that I really liked.

This is mainly second-hand information. I haven't worked at a Japanese company, the closest I've gotten was interviews and a sort of off the record job offer. I have lived in the country for 1 year though, so I definitely saw the actual hours friends were at work or busy because of work.

1. Japanese business culture sees labor laws as guidelines.

2. Being overworked (meaning enduring or working extra hours) is seen as a "good" thing.

3. Doing anything to sabotage the team effort (including working fewer hours, not being available, not asking to help others) is seen as the worst thing you could do.

4. Being granted a week off by your company is seen as generous (even though you may be allocated 2 or more weeks a year). The corollary to this is not taking your allocated vacation hours is seen as a good thing.

5. You don't miss work due to a cold, you put on a mask and show up anyway.

6. Punctuality is in some ways more important than doing the actual job. This is why people go through great efforts to jam into a single train in order to not be late by even 5 minutes.

7. Apologies are expected, more than reasons or explanations. The message your superior wants to hear isn't that you screwed up, it is that you are inferior and have no excuse and he is superior to you (hence an apology). This is a legacy of Japan's feudal days; Japanese large corporations are essentially the transformation of what used to be feudal powers.

8. Confrontation is avoided at great lengths. This is why Japanese have a hard time of saying "no". This implies that if your boss asks for work to be done, you will undoubtedly agree without complaint.

9. Women are paid significantly less than men, but the trade off is a woman can quit her job to rear children and not be "penalized" from a social standpoint. Men get paid more than women but Japanese culture expects that the man of the family will pay for his wife and children in full through retirement even if the woman doesn't work a single day.

10. Since men are the de facto breadwinner, and women often don't work to take care of the household/children, men are expected (even by their own families) to work longer hours in order to advance the entire family. It is not uncommon for the father of a family to live/work in a city 2-3 hours away from where his family resides.

11. "Black" company (in Japanese) is a term that refers to businesses that have mandatory overtime (12+ hour days). I guesstimate roughly half of all companies in Japan are Black companies.

12. Companies often have "Nomikai" (drinking parties). They are not mandatory per se, but like everything in Japan, social pressure is often used to force people to attend. This is considered a work function even though no actual work takes place.

13. Most employees in Japan are part of "sales". This doesn't imply selling a product, rather it means wining and dining to the customer (Business to Business). This includes things like taking the customer on dinners, karaoke, golf, etc all "on the house". Failure to do this mean strain on the customer relationship. Strain on the relationship implies loss of business.

14. There's a "right" way of doing everything. Japan is a society that values process and manners. For example when you, a Japanese national, go on an interview, and must enter an interview room, you first knock exactly 3 times, yell "excuse me", wait for an invitation, open the door, yell again "pardon me", then enter the room, promptly close the door, wait to be invited again to take a seat, then proceed to take the seat. Failure to do this correctly exactly as listed looks bad.

15. Japanese (the language) continues to require honorific/humble language in addition to polite language. In school, children must address students senior to themselves using polite language. In the workplace, employees must be able to address superiors and customers using honorific/humble language (a step above polite language, imagine talking to a king in the old days with English). Distant acquaintances and strangers must also be addressed with at a minimum polite language. Casual language is reserved for friends and family only. To be fair, this isn't just unique to Japan but is common in many East-Asian and nearby cultures.

16. If you want to avoid this hellish landscape and remain in Japan and still be respected, you do have one and only one option. Do well on your college entrance exams in high school, get into the top tier schools, then apply to the top companies and highly desired positions. This will spare you of regular mandatory overtime during your adult life, allow you to have better than average salary, and still be highly respected in society despite only working may an average 10 hours a weekday. Doing something else (like going abroad) is not seen as the "normal" way. Not being normal is not good. The only exceptions are English teachers, translators, and obviously affluent families (that would have been fine anyway). University students can also get away with study abroad, assuming they don't go more than a year and join the rest of their peers in the same job hunting style at the end of it. But these students may have already accepted that they are unlikely to land a good job so study abroad is seen as a way to delay the inevitable.

17. More and more Japanese are slowly just beginning to say "fuck it". This is leading to interesting subcultures. For example the term called "freeters" (shortening of English free-timers) is a culture of young Japanese that refuse to work standard salary jobs and instead work multiple part time jobs often taking breaks in employment to enjoy free time. More 20s and 30s Japanese are taking advantage of working holiday visa arrangements with other countries as an attempt to expatriate. More and more Japanese are negotiating or purposely deciding to only take jobs where they are allowed a fixed number of hours (often the cost is a reduction in pay or a not so great work assignment). But these groups are still very much the minority and there are definite sacrifices these people have made (or they're just mentally crazy) in the eyes of the typical Japanese.

Work-life "balance" isn't... there's a finite budget of seconds that goes to this or that; so it's how you spend them, how impactful are their results... whether it's enjoyed / "success" by whatever is your interpretation of it's meaning. That said, maybe some people find some reward while simultaneously killing themselves to fit in like Walmart executives (whom jockey to arrive earliest) and newbie startup founders (hopefully they keep enough equity and retain/sustain passion to ship something people love and don't shut/meltdown when they succeed out of fear of the unknown) ... the two former conditions aren't necc. mutex. (It's only lack of self-awareness anticipating likely outcomes that would be a failure.)

It's not how early one comes in or late, how may hours, ... these are all "process people" behaviors that aren't focused on the content impact of their effort.

Finally, inspired by Sir Branson's take on work-life... it's the same thing, act in a globally-consistent manner. Much easier than the insecure, naïve person trying to wear "boss" or "worker" costumes... it's value-subtract business theater.

I could just be old or completely full of shit, either is fine.